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Your Contributions Make Our Nation Stronger

At first, seeing taxes taken out of your paycheck can be a little disappointing. However, you can take pride in knowing you’re making an important impact each week when you contribute to Social Security. Understanding how important your contribution is takes some of the sting away because your taxes are helping millions of Americans — and protecting you and your family for life — as well as wounded warriors, the chronically ill, and disabled.

By law, employers must withhold Social Security taxes from a worker’s paycheck. While usually referred to as “Social Security taxes” on an employee’s pay statement, sometimes the deduction is labeled as “FICA” which stands for Federal Insurance Contributions Act, a reference to the original Social Security Act. In some cases, you will see “OASDI” which stands for Old Age Survivors Disability Insurance.

The taxes you pay now translate to a lifetime of protection — for retirement in old age or in the event of disability. And when you die, your family (or future family) may be able to receive survivors benefits based on your work as well.

Because you may be a long way from retirement, you might have a tough time seeing the value of benefit payments that could be many decades in the future. But keep in mind that the Social Security taxes you’re paying can provide valuable disability or survivors benefits now in the event the unexpected happens. Studies show that of today’s 20-year-olds, about one in four will become disabled, and about one in eight will die, before reaching retirement.

Be warned: if an employer offers to pay you “under the table,” you should refuse. It’s against the law. They may try to sell it as a benefit to you since you get a few extra dollars in your pay. But you’re really only allowing the employer to cheat you out of your Social Security credits.

If you’d like to learn a little more about Social Security and exactly what you’re building up for yourself by paying Social Security taxes, take a look at our online booklet, How You Earn Credits, at www.socialsecurity.gov/pubs/10072.html.

If you have a friend who lost a parent when they were a child, they probably got Social Security survivors benefits. Social Security helps by providing income for the families of workers who die. In fact, 98 of every 100 children could get benefits if a working parent dies. And Social Security pays more benefits to children than any other federal program. You can learn more at www.socialsecurity.gov/survivors.

I think it is downright awful, that i have to pay additional amounts from my S.S. retirement monthly stipend and on top of that, Social Security charges me more because of my income.
I paid into the system for decades and feel that I am getting ripped off.
I feel that i should not have to pay anymore than what i did when i was working. that is the way the system was supposed to work. I should not be charged AFTER i retired. I retired in 2010

Why do some people feel it necessary to use vulgar language when commenting on another person’s post? It just shows the ignorance and lack of respect of some people, and if they think it’s “cute” or appropriate, they are sadly mistaken.

I like Colossus better the way I knew him as I grew up – the sevtesini, nice guy whose rage usually strikes only when a loved one is in danger. He was still badass that way! Besides, everyone wants Cain Marko back as the Juggernaut

I look at what I have paid in over my lifetime over 148K and my employer matched it 296K if I had that amount and the interest over a lifetime even with market fluctuations I would have an amazing retirement. When I hear politicians say they need to decrease “entitlements”. What does that even mean? The money the government withheld without my agreement and is supposedly holding for my retirement.

I had served 1957 – 1960 I had not asked for any service before until last year and then was told that I could not receive and ways for extra connection. This true or has all general person now some how received a way to change life??

My 25 year career was outsourced to INDIA and I lost my home, custody of my son’s, ….. I was determined disabled, when I received my first check I was told it was reduced “due to Obama’s cut for refuges” – I started working at 16 and I didn’t do it for them.
I have to pay child support out of my disability, it makes me feel I was robbed for those refugees.

I have a similar story. I also feel robbed! 6 years of harassment and having become homeless, at one point, because they suddenly decided I had to pay back $12,000. I lost my job at a large corporation that looked at tax returns. First, you wouldn’t believe the corporate write-offs and how they can get to a zero taxable income. Next, though, there was a woman in her late 50s, disabled, kids still at home and husband had passed away that year. Suddenly, she was also asked to “pay back” several thousand, tell me how that is going to happen, They really don’t care though.
When visiting the local office recently, I saw a big screen where it bragged about having collected so many billions in SS.
Mine, when being figured, does not come out to 12, 000, as they billed me. I worked more than the “allowed time” for a couple of months in an office that was just getting started with foster care. No matter, I worked really hard, and went over for a little bit. Low and behold, they now had a liscence to “take back” thousands! This was after Obama was elected into office also.

I was a child support officer, there are benefits available for dependent children through SDI benefits, the court can not withhold from your SDI, seek a modification of your support order, try advising the court your perminatly dusabled and SDI is your income source, visit tour ssa office and ask them about depedsnt benefits, if they are eligible, obtain verification of what the benefit they will receive, request ca to be set at amount of the benefit being pd for the defendant. Arranged will still be your responsibility but many states have forgiveness program if the ca is owed to reigns cash aid (welfare) for the children… info can be found on your state child support website. Google child support law for your state for disabled pared this to see what znd how your disability is effected or seek legal assistance.

How can refugees collect anything from Social Security, when we are told you have to pay inat least 40 quarters before you qualify to collect anything??? the politicians need to live by the same rules they require us to live by and things would be much MUCH different.

Refugees get over 5,000 when they land! Senior’s lost their ,03% COLA stipend raise in 2017, having gone 3 years without a raise; medicare part B premium ate it up! Seniors are having to work to make ends meet, pay for drugs, etc. Employers still take out Social Security from every paycheck, and no longer refund it while they are “choosing” to work past 65/66. Why, you can guess why and where it is going… entitlements for non-paying SS participants got it all I would love to get my hands on SS’s budget and just where the money is going! I worked since age 16, and my SS check is earned, not an entitlement to me! Life isn’t fair!

we need somebody in the office to pay in there fair share instead of taking our paid in money we could live good if we did not pay the people we to pay to take the money we worked all our lives to dead beats

We have no energy policy and havenâ€™t had for den.sedaThack you Ronald Reagan, George H W Bush, Richard Cheney, Phil Gramm, Newt Gingrich, Tom Delay, George W Bush, ET Al who helped the Texas oil cabal who worked very hard blocking any real energy policy to maximize their profits over the national good.

Something to realize is that politicians and government who/that are/is being called out are citizens: relatives,
neighbors, friends. Nope, they are not from outer space. I often question their decisions, but still ask myself if I could do better deciding what is best for everyone else and my Country. For sure, their logic is often not mine.

So you hzve to work for 20 years…. that is what 40 quarters is. All politicians and Americans work far more then 20 yrs. we start working st 15 or 16 and don’t usually retire until we are in our sixties. 60-16=44x 4 quarters per yr= 176 quarters in a life time. Does that assist with your concerns??? You should be thankful you can get benefit with only 10 yrs of working and paying in to be eligible to obtain benefits…I think you owe those of use that paid in for our 44 yrs of working and paying into ssa system!!!

In a decent and peaceful democracy our neighbors would not ask the government to do anything that would be wrong if they did the same thing to their neighbors. Now, imagine if I stole money from my neighbor to cover my medical bills. I would go to jail. The people who lobbied for SS are violent criminals, and so are those who passed it, signed it into law. As well as those who refuse to repeal it.

I don’t want to donate my money at this time because I don’t earn enough, I worked 13 years so I need my money that gets taken out!!!
The millionaires can help !! They spend money on things not needed— I buy basics. Food-pay bills. Medicines. Mtge. gasoline for my 2004 Nissan, etc ,, all I need is what l had monthly – $3000. A month,,,! Even that didn’t leave me much.

Single parent… I worked more than 13 yrs, struggled…got my child to college and even sent her 1/2 my income to cover her living exspences doing with out and living below my means, and I’m diabetic, so times I could not buy insulin and reduced my dose age so I had enough to make it through the mo. I’m disabled now, not from my diabetes or anything related, I thank god now that I paid in as my dis retirement and SDI pays me a little less then my bring home pay was, so at least I can still make it from month to month. Get over it you will benefit later bye set up retirement plan if you don’t have one from employment. You’ll need it. Invest in yourself now will pay you later!!!

I have been paying into SS since I was 14 years old and now I am 52. I have multiple disabilities and unable to work. I hired a lawyer (one of my doctors recommended so, I would not add additional stress on my body) and it has been 2 years and I am still not receiving my money. I have used all savings and all mine and my spouses 401k. My lawyer said he has seen clients go homeless before they hear on their SS benefit. I cannot believe we have a government that will allow this to happen. I have a 4 year degree and made good salaries and my lawyer said they hold people like me back also because they do not want to pay that much to me each month. We have a problem with the system. Please let me know has this can be resolved before I lose my home!!!!

I looked up my illness. Medical disabilities such as loss of cognitive abilities, balance issues…extra. I review that giant questionnaire and detailed all my medical issues. I worked with my doctors regarding all medical issues that are leading to my disabilities and request he provide and address all issues I had znd report this for my SDI application. I was lucky for doing my homework and application was sent for ssa medical exam and review, and approved 1 1/2 month after I applied. I was also 52. I worked in a job the provided me with SDI/ssa law and info of what hang ups that can be caused. Most of all is your application and or doctors reports provide was not a full and complete picture supporting you disability, causing the denial, along with the fact that most application from those of us in are 50’s seem to be dennied…. even those with verified terminal illnesses. Try to obtain the most complete medical documentation you can, review your application questionnaire you completed, re address anything you may have provide short incomplete answers, many question will seem to ask for the same info, yep. Answer it fully each time! Don’t just put see question #xx. Make sure you answers are supported by your doctors report have your attny review it and petiontion for hearing

I retired from GE when I was 59 1/2 years young and lived on my own funds and drew SS early when I became 62 so I could receive it for a few years before a good share of it was gone to people who never paid into the program and it went default. It is not an entitlement as I paid into it since 11 years of age delivering newspapers. Also, in our small town of Wapello, Iowa, there are plenty of people who draw SS disability since high school and are still doing so but still work for cash under the table all these decades. How’s that for having your cake and eating it too? If I had the funds I and my employer paid in, I could live my remaining years so much better. Just another program the LAZY moochers are milking and no one does anything about or don’t care to because it’s not politically correct. Most of us retirement people will die before we receive all the funds us and our employers paid in. What a sham.

Pres. Johnson (a Dem) took all the excess money that had been built up in SS and put into the general fund and then spent it to make his admin look good. VP Al Gore cast the deciding vote to tax our SS. (a Dem). Now we are at the point where SS is going broke. Why didn’t Pres. Obama (a Dem) fix the program while he was in office? We all know it needs fixing. Now money is coming out of the Fed Gov. to pay for the short falls. So we are actually paying for our own SS check twice. We paid into it, our employer paid into on our behalf and we are paying into it again. Guess that’s three times. Ah yes, our wonderful government at work.

” But keep in mind that the Social Security taxes you’re paying can provide valuable disability or survivors benefits now in the event the unexpected happens. Studies show that of today’s 20-year-olds, about one in four will become disabled”
Really? 25% of the 20 year olds will become disabled before retirement? Do men or women still lose their limbs while building railroads or when their working in a cotton mill? They should have a separate fund for disability. This money shouldn’t be drawn from the general fund. Me thinks they also need to tighten the requirements for disability.

First of all, I think people with disabilities and those who have never paid into SS should be getting help from states Medicaid programs instead of a program they never contributed to even through no fault of their own. There needs to be a separate fund for these citizens and not for immigrants who aren’t supposed to here in the first place. No wonder, they all want to come here. And what really pisses me off is the feds will give refuges a low interest loan to start a business and forget about the American citizen and it takes away from American citizens getting jobs because they hire their own people to work whether they are supposed to be here or not. I was one of these people.

Not happy here either, and I agree, it should be a different fund that it is paid from, if they never paid in.
I have paid in to SS since I was about 12, helping a neighbor measure lawns and delivering statements, and a Sun paper route. I am now 52. A Dr messed up with a pacemaker, and I had such heart failure for a few years that I slept 20 hours a day! I qualified to get a SS payment, based on what I had earned until I had the surgery (nobody would admit wrong doing, of course, and because docs stick together, nobody would file a suit either.)
But, my point is that not everyone who gets disability hasn’t paid in. I would guess most of us have. I understand that if you are below a certain rate, and of the poorest, there is an additional amount sent (SSI?) I’m not exactly sure where that one comes from.

And to ICE, YES, I voted for TRUMP because he never killed anyone or had anyone serve prison time for what they did and you know who I’m talking about. These slimballs should be in prison becoming gay with cellmates.

If you still work in a job that is covered under Social Security, at ANY age you will still pay into SSA.

Your benefits are based on your best 35 years. If you are working at say 94 years old, you will still pay into SSA.

If that year of work figures into your best 35 years, Social Security will automatically adjust your benefit to the higher amount in March or October of the next year following the year in which you worked. This is called the AERO.

If your prior year of earnings does not figure into your best 35 years, then your payment stays the same. The AERO can never make your payment go down, only up.

So if you are working there is NEVER an age in which S.S. would stop taking FICA tax out of your check.

How did Americans become so utterly ignorant? Most of these comments are just this side of completely insane! How is it that you people are able to post comments so full of false, incorrect, ridiculous, and literally impossible, made-up statements, which you clearly believe to be true?! You’re on the actual, official website of the Social Security Administration, yet you make all these idiotic, inane statements that prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that you’ve never read one page on the site, and many of you appear not to have even read the article you’re commenting on…Instead you simply get to the end and start posting all your personal vitriol, ranting against a government agency that you know absolutely nothing – NOTHING AT ALL – about. Again, this is glaringly obvious from the ludicrous and sometimes even downright stupid things you say.

One poster on another article stated, ” Social Security only hires immigrants who can’t speak English.” Seriously? And not a day goes by where at least one person (but more often, it’s dozens of posters) rails against people who are “too lazy to work so they fake disability to get my hard-earned tax dollars.” And always those who rant about “illegals” getting Social Security, welfare, etc., and complaining how they don’t feel their withheld dollars should go to anyone who “doesn’t deserve it,” which is everyone but them. Oddly though, every one of these people demands they receive their “Fair share,” complains about not getting enough, or not getting a “raise,” then proceed to blame Obama, the “liberals,” and/or the Democrats.

Again, all of these people are proving, by their own posts and these astonishingly ignorant statements and beliefs, that they know absolutely nothing about Social Security, Meficare, Medicaid, disability, or even the most basic facts about how THEIR OWN GOVERNMENT works! Yet they feel perfectly comfortable attacking that same government for things that aren’t even possible, much less true, and, ironically, still feel entitled to all kinds of benefits and services that only government can provide to citizens – which, by the way, is the REASON and SOLE FUNCTION of government in the first place. You can read (comprehend what you read, not so sure, but you can read enough to post), so why not try to EDUCATE yourselves by READING some of the vast amount of useful information the government provides for your understanding of your own country.

Everyone is always demanding their “rights” – but recognize that rights always, always, always come with RESPONSIBILITIES. It’s your responsibility as a citizen of the United States of America to be aware of what your country is, at the very leadt. And you will never, ever know if you rely on news, neighbors, talk show hosts, and politicians whose only interest is in keeping their cushy jobs instead of getting the ACTUAL information about your government from the source- the official government websotes, publucations, and information they make available to every one of us.

I need to have taxes with held on my SS payments . I have been all over the web site and can find no help. I have held on the phone at 800 772 1213 for 55 minutes two times and was never answered . My phone battery died the first time . The web site suggested I open an account I tried but was refused . I give up.

we are missionaries and since 2015 our Mission Agency chose to no longer contribute a portion of of our salary to FICA. We failed to read and act upon the email sent to us that included the instuction to submit Self- Employment payments on our own….
How do we catch up our missing payments for 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018. Do we submit our W-2 amounts for each of those years?

Hi, Holly. In order to have taxes withheld from your Social Security benefit, you must start by printing, completing and submitting an IRS Voluntary Withholding Request Form (Form W-4V). On this form, you can choose to have 7, 10, 12, or 22 percent of your monthly benefit withheld. Form W-4V (to withhold federal taxes from your Social Security benefits) can be returned to your local Social Security office by mail or in person. See our Benefits Planner: Withholding Income Tax From Your Social Security Benefits web page for more information. We hope this helps.

Hi, Susanne. For your security, we do not have access to private information in this venue. We ask that members in our Blog community work with our offices with specific questions. You can call us at 1-800-772-1213, Monday through Friday, between 7:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m., for assistance. Generally, you will have a shorter wait if you call later in the day. You can also contact your local Social Security office. We hope this helps.